Old New World
Jonathan Kimberley with Ngipi Ward, Nancy Carnegie, Norma Giles, Pulpurru Davies, Manupa Butler, Jodie Carnegie and Paul Carnegie.
Bett Gallery Hobart, Tasmania. 2009.
“Terra incognita is now a metaphor. The twenty-first century world map contains no unknown land, and in the age of Google Earth it is inconceivable that a world map of the future will bear the words ‘lands not yet known’”.
Globalisation presumes lands ‘not yet known’. These unknowns exist within the dissolution of world map pre-conceptions. Herein flows the contemporaneity continuum of terra incognita; whist the listening required emerges amidst spatiality created only in transcultural collaboration. The constant of the Old New World is ever-present.
The notion of ‘lands not known’ in any century of human history, anywhere on the planet, has always been colonial fantasy. The artists and elders who have guided me over the years in ngaanyatjarra country and gija country, Western Australia; meenamatta country, nipaluna (Tasmania); and in limpopo, South Africa, have taught me to listen to the fact-reality ancestry of country.
“To me this is new stories and old stories coming together. We don’t know what the words are for these paintings yet. Just look at the paintings, you will feel it.”
Solo works by Jonathan Kimberley and Kuluntjarra World Map collaborations with Ngipi Ward, Nancy Carnegie, Norma Giles, Pulpurru Davies, Manupa Butler, Jodie Carnegie and Paul Carnegie (2007 – 2009).
© Jonathan Kimberley, Ngipi Ward, Nancy Carnegie, Norma Giles, Pulpurru Davies, Manupa Butler, Jodie Carnegie and Paul Carnegie, 2009.
